Pulling, punching, biting and shoving

Posted by Paul Dix on 27 January 2012 | 1 Comments

This article was originally published in Teach Nursery Magazine in January 2011.

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Motivating Children

Posted by Paul Dix on 20 January 2012 | 0 Comments

This article was originally published in Teach Primary Magazine in 2009.

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Behaviour Change, Magic Dust and False Promises

Posted by Paul Dix on 16 January 2012 | 0 Comments

This article was first published on the Guardian Teacher Network blog in August 2011.

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Gladwell, Dweck and Peak Performace

Posted by Frank Farrell on 13 January 2012 | 1 Comments

I have written before about the work of Dr. Carol Dweck.  Broadly speaking, she divides people into groups who believe our intelligence is fixed (‘fixed mindset’) and those who believe it can be developed (‘growth mindset’).
 
The former often tend to feel the need to ‘prove’ their intelligence and so are likely to shy away from tasks they perceive as too challenging in case they fail them. From this viewpoint it would show they are not intelligent. Those with the growth mindset see themselves on a path of expanding skills and knowledge. They are happy to tackle a challenge because they believe it will develop them.
 
We want our students to be resilient and to see ‘failure’ for what it is:  an event and not a state of being. We need to encourage them to adopt a growth mindset.
Dweck’s ideas are complemented by Malcolm Gladwell’s findings in his book , Outliers. Here he explores and accounts for outstanding success in fields as diverse as sport, music and computing.
 
He reports the findings of research conducted 1990’s by the psychologist Ericsson at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music. Professors divided the students into three groups. First, the stars who would probably go onto have careers as world-class soloists. Next, the good. The third group would probably never play professionally but would become music teachers.  Each group was asked the same question: over your career so far, from the day you picked up the violin, how many hours have you practised?
 
They all started playing at around the same age and in the first few years they all practised about the same amount: two to three hours a week. By eight differences began to emerge.  The best were practising more six hours a week by the age of nine; eight hours by twelve; sixteen hours a week by the age of fourteen and by twenty they were doing well over thirty hours a week. In total they had amassed about 10,000 hours.  Good students had a total of eight thousand hours and the final group about four thousand hours. They found the same pattern with amateur and professional pianists. Indeed, 10,000 hours of practising seem to be the identifying marker of peak performers in a range of fields.
 
But the most significant finding was the busting of the myth of the ‘naturally talented’.  The study found no examples of any elite performer who didn’t work very, very hard. Nor did they find anybody who put in the maximum hours without making the top rank.
 
This is very significant for learners to understand. It’s tempting to think that outstanding performers are just ‘born’ that way. That other people are more successful because they just have natural talent (a fixed mindset perspective). In fact, whilst a certain amount of natural talent is necessary, it needs very hard work to develop it. However, provided that the work is done, then progress will be made (a growth mindset attitude).
 
If students (indeed any of us) can understand this, then it can feed intrinsic motivation. There is no external limitation (your natural ability) dictating that you cannot make progress towards your goals. If you want something enough and are prepared to work (very!) hard, then Gladwell ‘s and Dweck’s work suggest that you can only improve.
 
Of course, knowing what we want and being able to motivate ourselves are separate issues and  I shall return to these later.

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